Monday, July 31, 2006

Of All the Ways to Spend a Shabbat Afternoon...

NY1 reports on a protest against Israeli policies in Lower Manhattan on Saturday. Many of the protesters were Jews:

The march was co-sponsored by Jews Against the Occupation, but protestors of many religions joined them to call for an immediate cease-fire in the region.

"There are a lot of Jews who are against Israeli policy and believe that what Israel is doing now in Lebanon is not just; its not justified," said one protestor. "It's not going to solve the crisis and though Israel may claim to act in our name, as American Jews it's not acting in my name, not Israel and not the United States."

I'm pleased to see that a video clip from the march shows that among the "Jews who are against Israeli policy" are some Neturei Karteniks marching among the throngs. That doesn't surprise me. What does is the fact that they obviously felt that the cause was so important that it superceded other activities that they could have been doing on a Saturday, like...uh...praying? Eating a Shabbat meal?

34 Comments:

I agree with you that this is not exactly the way to spend Shabbat afternoon....

A question - why haven't you posted about the shooting attack on Friday afternoon at the Federation in Seattle, in which one woman was killed and five others injured? I'm puzzled that this event, which happened here in the U.S., hasn't been discussed more in the Jewish Blogosphere (other than by Kesher Talk, which has covered it extensively).

"but the t shirt and shorts is ok for the mos in teaneck and the 5 towns?"

The halacha does not state what dress code on should wear on shabbat, (even if one is implied, the punishment for not complying is limited) but does state what one should not do on shabbat, (the punishment for violating is death) so I do not see the equality.

OMom, could you please ban statements like those just uttered by NKnik? That's disgusting, as well as being historically inaccurate. Many Sephardim died in the Holocaust (in the Balkans, Greece, and the Greek Islands - over 90% of Greek Jewry was murdered). And how did the Zionists create the Holocaust? I was under the impression that the Nazis were the perpetrators.

"James said... I must say I respect these men and they are true believers in the Torah unlike some folks that have recently slaughtered 100's of innocent people"

Every chayil is a true believer (there are not athiests in the fox hole). I cahllange these "men" as you call them to show me what belief sytem tells them to fratinize with "non-belivers" and protest against the "protecting" of their actual brothers and sisters.

I see no reason to justify NKnik's comment. But, it is obvious that he is extremely ignorant of history.

E.g. 90% of Greek Sephardim were killed in the holocaust.

As for my family (the Ashkenazi part), I believe that everyone that did not make it into the US before the war was killed in Europe. But, unlike you, they are all lovers of the people of Israel and of our Israeli brethern.

a. I see James is floating around, sniping at various blogs. Jameel and now you. Like a Katyusha missile or a Kassam rocket.

b. As for that NKer, if anyone has a comparable responsibility for the Holocaust to what the NKer assigns to the Zionists, the Minchat Eliezer's exhortations, among others, not to go to Eretz Yisrael also contributed to the high death count.

c. and OM, you wrote "some Neturei Karteniks marching among the throngs", the way they looked away in the first section, I think there may have been thongs there too.

The NKers on their perverted website make a big production of endorsing the claims of the Palestinians, and anti-Israel types of all stripes -- Far Left, Far Right, Arab and so-callled "religious Jews" -- are fond of saying that it is somehow "unfair" that Israel was created in the years after WWII by a UN vote because the Arabs whose land was allegedly being taken from them by guilty Europeans supposedly played no role in the Holocaust.

WRONG, WRONG, WRONG!!!

When the Holocaust began to pick up steam after Kristallnacht, in 1938, a natural place of refuge for many of the Jewish masses of Europe would have been Palestine, then under British administration. But early in 1939, London slammed the door on Jewish immigration, issuing the infamous White Paper of 1939, choosing appeasement as its response to years of increasingly violent protests, pogroms, bombings and other terrorist incidents masterminded by the so-called "Grand Mufti" of Jerusalem, Amin Husseini al Haj -- incidentially a great-uncle and early mentor of the late, but unlamented, Yasser Arafat, whose real family name is Husseini (Arafat is an alias he adopted while fleeing from Egypt's police); the Mufti was the grandfather of Arafat's cousin, the late Faisal Hussieni, a vicious anti-Semite who was nontheless lionized upon his death a few years ago as a Palestinian "moderate." The apple does not fall far from the tree.

Besides stirring up anti-Jewish and anti-British agitation, the Mufti, not surprisingly, was also a friend of Hitler's (he spent the war years in Berlin as the Fuhrer's guest), pledged the support of the Arab people for a "Final Solution" in the Holy Land, had the Nazis conquered it, made propaganda broadcasts for the Nazis in Arabic and recruited Bosnian Muslims for the Waffen SS. The British wanted to hang him after the war for pro-Nazi crimes, but he was protected for decades till his death by Arab leaders, who also provided refuge for many other wanted Nazi fugitives.

So when some pro-Palestinian, or one of their ignorant fellow travelers, like the NK weasels, cry that the Arabs had "nothing" to do with the Holocaust, or compares Israel or the "Zionists" to Nazis, DON'T BELIEVE IT!

This just goes to show that not all jews support Israeli policies. There are some liberals who believe that the assault on Lebanon is unjustified and uncalled for. True, Hezbollah is holing up in Lebanon and they are respn sible for many raids against Israeli citizens and settlements but it is irresponsible for the Israeli government to bomb areas where civilian density are high. One cannot correct a wrongdoing by committing another wrongdoing.

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